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Dessert

To Make Rice Cheesecakes

A baked cheesecake made with rice, cinnamon, butter, eggs, sugar, cream, nutmeg, and ratafia or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Rice Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil rice with cinnamon until soft, then drain through a sieve.

  2. Crush the rice with butter using the back of a spoon.

Make the filling

  1. Add eggs, sugar, cream, grated nutmeg, and ratafia water or brandy; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into tins lined with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides body and a soft, starchy structure to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the filling its firm structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the dairy and butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set texture.
Ratafia water or brandy
Adds aromatic flavour that carries the warm spice notes.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, and overbaking pushes them too far, causing the custard to curdle, weep and turn grainy. Stop baking once the centre barely wobbles, since it firms as it cools.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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